Category: Life

No Money, No Time

We tend to assume that pressure makes us more efficient. I work fastest when I’m on deadline. I stretch my grocery budget the most when my funds are running low. But in reality, it’s not that you’re working better when you’re stressed. It’s that the opposite situation, overabundance, often makes us less efficient.

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The poor are under a deadline that never lifts, pressure that can’t be relieved. If I am poor, I work or I churn until decisions like buying lottery tickets begin to seem like attractive alternatives. I lack the time to calculate the odds and think of alternative uses for my money.

→ The New York Times

Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney

Then both of them turn to Owen. “You can do it, Owie,” Walt whispers. “I know you can.” Owen looks evenly at his brother and Merlin, and then steps to the anvil and lifts the sword true. Did he understand what Walt was saying? Did he just imitate what he saw his brother do? What the hell difference did it make? Today, in the sunlight, he’s the hero of his imagination.

→ The New York Times

Why Is Academic Writing So Academic ?

Often, an academic writer is trying to fill a niche. Now, the niches are getting smaller. Academics may write for large audiences on their blogs or as journalists. But when it comes to their academic writing, and to the research that underpins it—to the main activities, in other words, of academic life—they have no choice but to aim for very small targets. Writing a first book, you may have in mind particular professors on a tenure committee; miss that mark and you may not have a job.

→ The New Yorker

Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl ?

The boy’s coaches, and later his parents, ran onto the field. Smelling salts wouldn’t revive him. Eventually, an ambulance appeared. Sean was convinced that he’d killed the boy. He began to cry. But what Sean remembers most vividly was the way, right after the tackle, his teammates kept slapping his helmet, as if he’d just done the most heroic thing ever, which, in a purely football sense, he had.

→ The New York Times